I fail to agree in so much as air traffic is far more closely monitored, from movement of aircraft to who may be boarding the planes, and who is learning to fly them. Trains may not fall out of the sky but some of the commodities carried can be used to level a major city.
The fact is that total body count is not exactly the goal of the terrorist groups. If rail service is disrupted the American economy takes another HUGE blow. There are more goods moving via rail today than there has been in recent years and if a section of rail is tampered with to the point of derailment then what do you think the FRA will do? What will shippers do? What will the railroads do?
And passenger aircraft have been used as guided missiles to destroy the World Trade Center, by terrorists who had zero difficulty learning to fly them right here in America. Currently, a large majority of passenger aircraft are maintained at service centers outside of America - why? Because labor is cheaper and there is no FAA oversight or inspection. That might be your idea of safe travel, but it isn't mine.
Terrorism is an entirely different subject. A nuclear device that will level an entire city can be fitted into a suitcase in the trunk of a car - should we stop driving? How big a nuclear device will fit into a semi-trailer? Shall we give up interstate commerce as well? No one is inspecting even a tiny fraction of modular freight containers that enter America's harbors by the millions every year - let's shut down all shipping as well. For that matter, when I was stationed in Korea, there were eighty pound back-pack tactical nukes that could be carried and emplaced by a single soldier. Better not let anybody walk around carrying anything, either.
Someone usually survives a train crash - very few people ever walk away from an airliner crash - and computerized fly-by-wire aircraft cannot and will not survive a burst of EMP. Every single aircraft within range will fall out of the skies like a ruptured duck, and they all have the glide characteristics of an anvil. Trains, OTH, will coast to a halt as will automobiles.
Absolutely nothing in America is terrorist-proof, period.
Meanwhile, the original question about the possible future and/or return of rail passenger service remains on the table. If the railroads do not take up the slack, and it appears to be the majority opinion on this forum is that they will not, then what will be the future of transportation in America? Are Americans simply going to stay home instead of traveling? How long before the airlines, who are openly dedicated to alienating the very passengers that insure their economic survival, go broke and stop flying? What takes their place?
Not so very long ago, there were many different airlines serving America, which was a major factor in the decline of other forms of public transportation. Now only a handful of airlines remain and they are struggling to survive. My best guess is that foreign airlines will take up the slack if we don't. Greyhound can barely maintain the sorry excuses for buses that are on the roads now - don't look to them to serve the public.
But I'm curious - trucks and modular containers have been fitted onto railroad flatcars for decades. There are auto-trains. What stops the development of a modular passenger unit that can be fitted to an existing flatcar body when needed and removed and replaced with freight when it isn't? A simple modular unit with seats and windows, some attachment hardware, power hook-ups and self-contained chemical toilets and viola` - passenger service at a fraction of the cost. Why can't passenger units such as that be part of a freight consist? It used to be done that way all the time. You could even pack the passengers into those discarded, broken down Greyhound buses, fix the toilets, and load
those onto the flatcars.
Too bad I don't own a railroad - I don't see any of this as insoluble at all; I see it as one of the greatest opportunities in recent times. People just have to stop saying "we can't" and start doing.
It hard to imagine that we built the trans-continental railroads and opened up an entire continent. I guess Americans were a much different breed back then.
